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All Rise...

By the time Judge Mike Pinsky's parents got around to taking him to Tomorrowland, it had been renamed A-Week-Ago-Last-Tuesdayland.

The Charge

"It's a great big beautiful tomorrow, and tomorrow is just a dream
away!"—Theme from Progressland (Richard and Robert
Sherman)

"The history of mankind is all science fiction."—Ray
Bradbury

The Case

There used to be a most curious attraction at Disneyland. The "Monsanto
House of the Future" was a walk-through exhibit that proudly boasted that
everything inside was made of plastic. Not a single natural material was to be
found inside. The story goes that when they tried to tear down the House of the
Future to make room for new exhibits in Tomorrowland, the wrecking ball just
bounced right off it. They had to hack it apart by hand.

Walt Disney's obsession with technology and the future is so complex and
fascinating that I devote an entire chapter to the subject in my book, Future
Present: Ethics and/as Science Fiction. For Walt, there was always a
delicate balance between artistic production, commercial enterprise, and the
infinite horizon of the future. The Disneyland television show even
spotlighted Tinkerbell (imagination) flying into a swirling atom (science). As
Art Linkletter promised on Disneyland's opening day in 1955, Tomorrowland was
"not a stylized dream of the future, but a scientifically planned
projection of future techniques by leading space experts and
scientists."

But Tomorrowland was also meant to be sold. It was a celebration of the
triumph of capitalism and popular culture over yet another frontier. Walt may
have gushed, "Tomorrow can be a wonderful age. Our scientists today are
opening the doors of the Space Age to achievements which will benefit our
children and generation to come. In Tomorrowland, you will actually experience
what many of America's foremost men of science and industry predict for the
world of tomorrow." What you really experienced in the "Hall of
Chemistry," "Rocket to the Moon," and the "Bathroom of
Tomorrow" was the sense that space and the atom, the two great mysteries of
the 1950s, were new territories to conquer. After all, Disneyland was always
about colonialism, from the jungles of Adventureland to the Wild West of
Frontierland.

If you will, think of the first three installments of Walt's
"Tomorrowland" series for the Disneyland television show as
benign propaganda shorts. Their intention is to generate enthusiasm for another
project of colonial expansion. The science, while often accurate and detailed,
is really almost an afterthought. In this vein, Walt decided that the space
science for the Disneyland show needed to seem friendly and simple. Who
better to simplify science than someone who knew nothing about it? Walt's shrewd
logic pointed him to Ward Kimball, who took charge of the project and created
three "Tomorrowland" episodes in rapid succession.

• "Man in Space" (1955) From Georges
Méliès to rare footage of V2 tests, this first
"Tomorrowland" installment touts the superiority of rockets. No
wonder: Kimball's technical advisors on the "space trilogy" (as well
as the entire U.S. space program) were former V2 designers for the Nazis whom we
snuck into the country as part of Project Paper Clip. Willy Ley, Heinz Haber,
and Werner Von Braun fill us in on the miracles of rocket physics (Thomas
Pynchon must have seen this before conceiving Gravity's Rainbow), the
effects of outer space on the human body, and even a recoverable winged space
shuttle. Von Braun predicts passenger space travel in 10 years. This episode was
so popular that Walt trimmed it up for a theatrical release.

• "Man and the Moon" (1955) Von Braun covers some
similar ground here, but there are some fresh animated and live action segments
showing the realities of space travel—at least by the standards of '50s
science fiction movies. Notice that the animation Disney produced in the 1950s
had that simplified and angular design that showed the influence of rival studio
UPA on the cartoon industry.

• "Mars and Beyond" (1957) This is one of the
best episodes in the entire Disneyland series. It is also one of the
weirdest, beginning with Walt's surreal chat with a robot named Garco. A funny
cartoon recounts misguided speculations over the centuries about the planet
Mars, including a hilarious parody of '50s alien invasion movies that still runs
endlessly in the Sci-Fi Dine-In Theater at the Disney Studio Theme Park. In the
second half of the episode, serious science takes over, as Kimball and company
offer eerie and experimental art to suggest possibilities for Martian life. The
Disney crew really pushes itself creatively here, and the results are
eye-popping and inventive.

All this enthusiasm about outer space was about to come crashing down. When
Sputnik reached orbit in October 1957, America panicked. Suddenly, outer space
was not simply a matter of curiosity; it was a Cold War battleground. Listen to
all that talk by Werner Von Braun and his pals about the "conquest of
space." They knew, having tried to conquer it for Hitler a decade earlier.
Space was about colonialism and ideology. And the Soviets had just won the first
skirmish.

There is a shift in tone in Disneyland's Tomorrowland offerings at
this point. If Disc Two of the Tomorrowland collection is less
impressive, it is only because few Disney offerings of the '50s could quite top
"Mars and Beyond" for its gung-ho creativity. Instead, unease
permeates the series. Indeed, the 1959 theatrical featurette "Eyes in Outer
Space" often feels more like ideological damage control. Ostensibly the
short talks about weather and satellites, climaxing with speculations about a
future weather control system. But look at that title again. To whom do those
"eyes" belong? Who is watching you?

"Our Friend the Atom" (1957) is even more unintentionally
chilling. After all, what friend makes you sterile and burns off your skin? Dull
Dr. Heinz Haber cannot seem to make atomic power quite as fun as rockets. So
Walt drops by to promise "atomic projects" afoot at the Disney Studio,
including a theme park exhibit (which never happened) and a ballistic missile
system aimed at Knott's Berry Farm. Just kidding about that last one. But Disney
did later win the right to build a nuclear power plant for the Florida theme
park—the company has just judiciously chosen not to exercise it.

To say that the second half of "Our Friend the Atom," in which we
learn how radioactive dust helps crops grow bigger and healthier (!), is creepy
would be too obvious. Of course, it is easy now to narrow our eyes at Walt's
blind devotion to the miracles of science. The '50s were the age of better
living through chemistry. Three Mile Island, Love Canal, and Agent Orange would
come soon.

But even up until his death in 1966, Walt's futurism was unbridled. The real
prize on this latest entry in the Walt Disney Treasures tin sets is the
original promotional short created by Walt to plug his ambitious "Florida
Project." Created only a few months before his death, this film reveals
that the Orlando theme park was meant only as a draw for tourists, which Walt
summed up almost dismissively. His real passion was an "ideal" planned
community: the original EPCOT. Judging from the tensions brewing in Disney's
later Celebration project, we can only wonder how quickly Walt's plan would have
turned to chaos. But in 1966, it looked great. Walt envisioned weather control,
happy pedestrians, and clean underground service facilities that echo Fritz
Lang's Metropolis, or worse,
H.G. Wells's Morlocks.

Still, Walt's vision is impressive, and it is a pity that EPCOT could not
come to pass as intended, even if just so we could visit. The city's maddeningly
inorganic design, a '60s WASP paradise, would have made it terrifying to live
in, though. In any case, you can still see the scale model of the original EPCOT
in Orlando (on the Tomorrowland Transit Authority ride).

Series host Leonard Maltin rounds out this two-disc Tomorrowland tin
set with a handful of extras. Ray Bradbury (Walt's friend and, later, author of
the scenario for EPCOT's Spaceship Earth ride) chats about science fiction in
the 1950s. Designer Marty Sklar jokes about Walt's EPCOT plans, which he dubs
"Waltopia," and explains how the original cityscape evolved into the
permanent World's Fair we have today. While a brief Easter egg shows Walt
joining the Sherman Brothers for a chorus of "It's a Great Big Beautiful
Tomorrow," followed by a plug for Progressland at the 1964 World's Fair, we
are treated to none of Disneyland's Tomorrowland attractions. With all the great
footage available of Progressland (redubbed the Carousel of Progress), Mission
to Mars, and dozens of other park attractions, I am a little stunned that a DVD
calling itself Tomorrowland features nothing from the real Tomorrowland.
Hey, Leonard, how about a disc of Disney ride footage in the next wave of
Walt Disney Treasures discs? Give us a chance to ride that rocket to the
moon once again, and dream of futures that never came to pass.